


Out of Moonlight, Battles Axes, and Cats, We Find Ourselves Together

by im_the_king_of_the_ocean (RebelliousWhirlpool)



Series: Nana's Troll Husband AU [1]
Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, The feels, more characters will likely be added as I write scenes with them, silliness, trolls and humans together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-04-23 18:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14338131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebelliousWhirlpool/pseuds/im_the_king_of_the_ocean
Summary: Moments in the family life of the Domzalskis (and, yes, that includes everyone who they adopt into their lives who are, yes, technically family too - just try to argue this point with Nana, I dare you (hint: you won't win))





	1. The Floor is Lava

**Author's Note:**

> Margaret walks in on her husband and son playing an adventure game in their living room.
> 
> Based on a prompt found on Tumblr (here: fangirling911.tumblr.com/post/172945645709/okay-why-havent-i-seen-this-happen-in-my-fandoms).

There were things that no longer shocked Margaret Domzalski.  She’d married a troll and been introduced to an entire secret world right beneath the one she’d always known, after all.  It took a lot, quite a lot, to faze her these days.

“Margaret, no!”  Vraxel’s shout caused Margaret to jump nearly a foot in the air.  What was it?  What was wrong?  Had one of their experiments gone haywire again?  Did Kanjigar finally accept their offer to come over for dinner but something had happened and-

“THE FLOOR IS LAVA, MOM!”  Ralph shouted from his position safely tucked under his father’s arm.  “And if you step on it you’ll get all burned up!”

It was then that Margaret noticed her husband, her rather large, made of living rock and crystal spike husband, stood on their living room couch.  She frowned at him.

“I cleaned my hooves before we started playing, dearest.”  Vraxel recognized that look.  Even if one happened to be a troll, one did not track muck and dirt into Margaret Domzalski’s home.  “Now join us.  For we are adventurers seeking the lost and stolen treasures of Gatto’s Keep!”  He reached out a hand to her.

Margaret sighed dramatically, but took his hand and jumped up on the couch.  She tousled Ralph’s hair and he giggled.  “I don’t suppose it would be proper to let you two have all the fun.”  She winked at her son.

 


	2. Adoption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place sometime before Chapter 2 of Shadow of Change. Since the entire story is in Barbara’s perspective I couldn’t work this in anywhere, but this is pretty much how Nana & Vraxel came to decide they were going to help her.

Margaret walked in through the front door. “Vraxel?” She called.

“In here!” He yelled from the kitchen. “I’m making a broccoli casserole for dinner tonight.” He told her when she entered the room.

“You know that man who’s moving in across the street? James Lake?” Margaret sat down at the kitchen table. “The one who, yes is a Changeling. Don’t give me that look, honey.”

“I’m telling you, it’s highly unlikely that he-”

“He is. I know I’m right on this.” Margaret dismissed her husband’s objections with a wave of her hand. “Anyway, he has a wife. That’s why he needs the house. She’s pregnant and the baby’s due in March.” Margaret stood, stepped forward, and swiped a bit of food out of the casserole dish with her finger. “Mhmm. Delicious, as always.” She ignored Vraxel’s exasperated look. “And we’re going to adopt both her and the baby.”

Vraxel prided himself in having learned quite a lot about human customs over the decades of his relationship with Margaret, but he was still confused. “I don’t quite understand. If she is with child, she can surely take care of herself. Why would we-”

“Because she’s moving here from the Midwest. That’s nearly on the opposite side of the country, dear. And James is the only person she’ll know when she gets here.” Margaret gave him a Look. “We can’t just leave her alone with a changeling, Vraxel. She sounds like she’s around Ralph’s age, anyway. So, technically, it wouldn’t be that hard to get people to think she’s our daughter.”

Vraxel sighed. “You’ve already made up your mind on this, haven’t you?”

“Yup.”

“No chance you’ll change your mind?”

“Nope.”

“Does she even know we exist?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, make sure she finds out at some point.” Vraxel paused. “Does this new child of ours have a name?”

“Barbara.”

“Ok then. We’ll have to find the old glamour mask so I can pretend to be human. Otherwise, she’ll be in for quite the shock.”

“We’ll build up to telling her you’re a troll, dear.” Margaret stretched up on her tiptoes and pecked Vraxel on the cheek.

“Yes, yes. Now let me finish. Cooking is an art.”


	3. Vraxel the Cat Burglar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a prompt found on Tumblr (here: xhour-to-hour-note-to-notex.tumblr.com/post/172992998271/person-a-please-tell-me-that-you-didnt-get)

“Please tell me that you didn’t get another cat.”  Margaret took a deep breath.  

Vraxel glanced at the small, floofy kitten in his hands.  He’d already given it the name Snowball, for its silvery with black spots coat.  “…um.”  He quietly tried to hide the kitten behind his back, but nothing every really escaped Margaret’s notice.

Margaret raised an eyebrow at him.  “Please explain, dearest.”

Vraxel didn’t immediately answer so Margaret stepped out of the doorway and fully into the room.  That’s when she saw the cats.  Absolutely everywhere.  Hanging off the ceiling fan.  Popping up from the floorboards.  Climbing into cabinets.  Hanging off Vraxel’s horns.  Climbing up the crystals jutting from his back.  Dangling out of his hair.

One brave little black kitten, with a white spot over one of its eyes and white boots, came over to Margaret, sat on her foot, and meowed up at her.

“…I can explain.”  Vraxel started, absently pulling a cat out of his hair before it fell and depositing it on his shoulder.  “I _can_.  You see, I remembered that you like cats.  There was just so many in Trollmarket and they were all going to be eaten, so I um…stole them.  It was only supposed to be one or two, but.”  He shrugged sheepishly.  “They’re just so _cute_.”

“Ah, I see.”  Margaret knelt down and picked up the kitten who’d sat on her foot.  “You look like a “Pirate” to me.  How does that sound?”

Vraxel blinked.  “What?”

“We can’t just leave them all without names, sweetheart.”

 


	4. Father and Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vraxel takes his son on an adventure to find a ghost girl

Despite it taking hours of in-depth, detailed conversations about considerations and concerns, numerous potions (and one very complex spell), and nine months of perpetual worry about his wife’s health, Vraxel had never once regretted the decision to have a son.  He did, however, regret that the resulting child, Ralph, as his own flesh and blood, had to be half-troll and therefore susceptible to the weakness of all trolls, daylight.

No, Ralph wouldn’t turn to stone under the sun’s brutal rays as Vraxel would, but its glare did agitate the young boy’s skin and exposure could leave him feeling queasy for hours.  After a few years of struggle to get the local elementary school to recognize Ralph’s “skin condition” and their persistent refusal to do so, Vraxel and Margaret had finally decided to homeschool Ralph.  At least until they could figure out a permanent solution.  Which meant, after his morning lessons with his father ended, Ralph now spent most of his afternoons wistfully gazing out the window at the sunlit world he could never hope to explore.

And, every day, Vraxel grew more and more worried.  Of course, he was stuck indoors until nightfall as well, but Vraxel could, under the moon’s gaze, then go to Trollmarket and talk to old friends if he so wished.  Ralph had no such opportunity for community, only his parents.  His existence was a well-guarded secret from (most of) Trollkind and experience proved integrating him with humans was, for now, impossible.  So, Ralph remained without playmates or peers and lonely in a way neither his father nor his mother could truly hope to solve.

That day, under Vraxel’s concerned watch, Ralph left his place safely behind the window’s curtain to go over to the shelf of textbooks his parents had gathered for his education.  He pulled out a big book of maps of the United States and began to flip through it.

“Hey dad, what was that human city we stayed in after you and mom took me to see the Eternally Glowing Stones a couple months ago?”  Ralph looked up at his father.

Vraxel had to think.  His mind ran through a mental map of places in the troll world and their counterpart locations in the human world.  The Glow Stones, a formation of ancient rock coated in a bioluminescent fungi (famous for their many healing properties), were found deep in a cavern off what the humans knew as Mammoth Cave, a massive cavern system in the midwestern state of Kentucky.  He and Margaret had taken Ralph to see the stones on what Margaret called a “educational field trip” at the beginning of that past summer.  Afterwards, they’d travelled to the largest nearby human city so Ralph could get a taste of human culture too.  It took Vraxel a minute to remember the name of that city.

“Louisville, I believe,” he finally said.

“Can we…can we go back there?”  Ralph flipped through his atlas until he found a map of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio and located Louisville on it.  He pointedly made an effort not to look at his father, even as he brought the book over to him.

Vraxel frowned.  “Why do you want to go there?”  He personally didn’t remember Louisville being that memorable, but he wasn’t very fond of human cities in general (with the one exception of Arcadia).

“I…” Ralph bit his lip, and then actually glanced at Vraxel.  “…um I may have sort of snuck out one night while you and mom slept in the hotel and met someone.  A girl.  A ghost girl.  But she’s not really a ghost.  She just hunts them.  Until we went to the movies.  And I kinda got her in lots of trouble.  So she didn’t really get to catch any ghosts.  But I’ve been reading this book from Uncle Blinky’s library on ghosts.  And I think some of the stuff can help her.  Catch ghosts, I mean.  And I thought I could give her some notes I made out of it.  To make up for the getting her in trouble thing.  Cause she said she wanted to be my friend.  But I got her in trouble.”  He paused.  “I’m sorry about sneaking out?”

Vraxel absorbed all this, but kept a passive expression as his brain split off into the two factions of “happy his son had found a friend” and “very, very perturbed that his son had been wandering a strange city on his own” to fight an epic battle.  Eventually, he decided the potential of Ralph having at least one friend was extremely important and agreed that, when Margaret returned home from work, they would talk about returning to Louisville. 

However, for that to happen, Ralph had to sit and listen to a very long lecture on safety and not wandering around on his own in strange cities, and then write a three-page essay on the importance of being careful.  An essay Vraxel then “graded” (Vraxel never bothered with the human letters system, but did check that Ralph’s writing showed clear comprehension of the issue).

After all that, Vraxel and Ralph took all the cushions off the couch, built a fort, and played yet another round of their adventure game where the couch was a fortress, the floor was lava, and Vraxel a dragon Ralph had to catch until Margaret got home.

Margaret gave her permission over dinner (a new type of fish Vraxel was trying out called “salmon” that absolutely no one liked and all three of them agreed to never eat again) for the trip.  Though, she wanted to stay behind this time and have an evening to herself to relax while Vraxel and Ralph went.

So, that night, Vraxel shoved his son in a potato sack and headed for Trollmarket (the gyre was still faster than most all forms of human transportation and, as long as Ralph didn’t move around too much, no one would question what Vraxel was doing with a large sack).

One gyre ride later and they were in Kentucky.  It took a bit of time to reach Louisville after that.  Because Reasons.  Namely racing.

Vraxel stood back up after crouching down and allowing Ralph to climb on his back.  “You secure?”  He asked, even though he felt his son’s hands wrap around the horns on the sides of his head and hold on tightly.

“Yup, dad.”

“Alright, now hold on.”  Vraxel’s attention turned to a pasture of grazing horses.  “And let’s see if they want to race.”  He charged forward.  It only made sense, after all.  Horses had hooves.  He had hooves.  A part of Vraxel wanted to show off for his son.  Plus, wasn’t this the place where humans did a lot of horse racing?  Clearly, the best course of action was racing these particular horses.  Who didn’t want to race.  They lifted their heads from grazing to watch the running troll and then returned to their munching.

So, Vraxel, out of breath, headed off for Louisville.  After a couple minutes of silence but for Vraxel catching his breath, he and Ralph started chatting about any topic that came to mind.

It took them some time to find the cemetery where Ralph met his “Ghost Girl” friend but, when they did, she wasn’t there.  There was no one there but gravestones and the whispering wind.  It was then, among the reminders of death, that Vraxel began to truly wonder about the girl Ralph claimed to have met.  There wasn’t much evidence of the existence of actual ghosts, but Vraxel knew that it was feasible that his son may have actually met one.

“She’s probably at home.”  Ralph looked up at his father after an hour of fruitless waiting.  “I got her in trouble so she probably can’t sneak out anymore.”

Ralph led the way to a nearby apartment building.  There, he climbed a massive oak tree and tapped at a window on the second story for a full five minutes.  After that didn’t work, Vraxel finally climbed the tree himself and peered into the room, which was clearly a child’s bedroom.  But, from what he could see, every surface was coated in dust.  Clearly no one had inhabited the room for a long while.

Vraxel frowned.  “Son, maybe-”

“She wasn’t a ghost!  I know it!”  Ralph’s voice faltered.  “I…she was _real_.  A kid.  Just like me.  Well, not just like me.  But she was still a kid.  Who _hunts_ ghosts!”  He ended in a defeated whisper.  “She seemed so real.”

“They often do.”  Vraxel sighed, regretting his choice to allow this trip to happen.  Ralph would have been better off with a fond memory than the sad truth.  “Now, come on, let’s head home.  I’ll talk to Uncle Blinky to see if he can come up with anything that’ll help you walk comfortably in sunlight.  If anyone can figure it out, it’s him.”

“Does that mean I get to be in the library?”

“If you’re careful and quiet and no one else is there, yes.”

“YAY!”

And so Ralph quickly forgot all about his disappointment over the girl he’d met, who probably had just been a friendly ghost and not a ghost hunter. 

It was too bad that he was completely unaware that a troublemaking young girl, who’d once slept in the room Ralph and Vraxel had peered into, had been sent to live with her strict grandmother for what would be the longest summer of her life, but would be returning home for the school year the very next day. 

Ralph would, however, get to meet her again many years later.

 


	5. Backup Babysitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> n a scene not canon to the au, Ralph marries Morgana and they have Angor Rot act as a last minute babysitter.

“Bedtime is nine.Don’t let them have too many of the cookies or they’ll be up all night.Telling them a story when you put them to bed is nonnegotiable.They like stories you make up better than the ones in the books.”Morgana paused.“Oh, and remember, if absolutely anything happens to them, you will know my wrath.Am I understood?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Your tone says otherwise, my champion.”Morgana’s eyes narrowed.A barely visible aura of golden-yellow magic flared around her.“What problem is there?”

“None, my lady.”Angor Rot answered.“But when you woke me, I did not think it would be to watch over _whelps_.The Trollhunter is in this human city.I—”

Morgana stopped him with a glare.“Watch your tone.One of those _whelps_ is my blood son and the other is the offspring of one of my changelings and therefore kin of mine.You will watch over them and care for them for the duration of the evening.”Her expression softened.She held up her right hand, with the Inferna Copula on its index finger.“Complete this task successfully and I will return to you what you most desire.”

Angor Rot’s eyes fixated on the ring a long moment before returning to Morgana.“Very well.”

“Good.Oh and they need to eat _all_ their vegetables or they don’t get dessert.”Morgana leaned around Angor Rot to give both her son and his best friend knowing Looks as she spoke.“Am I clear?”She spoke to them.

“Yes, mom.”

“Yes, Mrs. Domzalski.”

Toby and Jim chorused.

“Good.”Morgana waved to them.“We’ll see you boys in a couple hours.”

In the car, Ralph was still irritable with her.“I can’t believe you thought a good backup babysitter would be an _ancient assassin._ ”

Morgana tried not to huff irritably.She’d agreed to free Angor Rot because he wished it, how much more did he need?Not that Morgana really liked the human.Of course not.She was just using him.But still, she preferred it when he wasn’t mad at her.For some reason.

“Oh, come on, Ralph.As long as she has the ring, they’ll be fine.”Barbara piped up from her position in the back seat polishing a massive, extremely sharp battle axe.“Now, you promised we’d be hunting down James.”

“And we are.”Morgana smirked.Really this couldn’t have worked out better than if she’d perchance ordered James to leave herself.Not that she had or anything.A little sprinkling of vengeance and Barbara was turning into quite the acolyte.“Dear?”Morgana turned to Ralph and raised her eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, yeah.”Ralph started the car.“but if one of them wants to become an assassin after this, I’m blaming you two.”


End file.
